Monday, January 19, 2015

Two Tips to Better Photograph Your Quilt's Texture

I played around with my new camera to try to get better pics. Below, the light is fairly straight on (on my design wall opposite the window).

It's hard to even tell that this is quilted in these pictures! It could just be a drawing.

The number one tip for showing off the dimension and texture of your quilting is Side Lighting! Lighting is so very important for good pictures, but with quilting, it takes side-lighting to capture the texture of the quilting.

In this picture, I've turned the design wall perpendicular to the window. (My design wall is batting covered 1 inch thick foam insulation board, and it's not attached to the wall.) What a difference it makes!

Perpendicular is a bit overkill as evidenced by the bright glow along the right side, but a slight rotation of the design wall will fix that.

Second, use a tripod. The tiniest movement of the camera when you press the shutter button will keep the focus from being as sharp as possible. That blur will flatten the appearance of the texture.

Bonus tip: If you've ever entered a quilt into a show, you already know to keep the camera exactly centered and square on the center of the quilt. The tripod certainly helps with this. Without it being centered, the quilt's shape is distorted into more of a parallelogram. You can see my tripod was slightly off when taking the above pictures.

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